Hard News: A depressing day in court
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No, not trying to be funny...just grappling with emotions really. On the one part I would like to get the whip and do the same to her. But returning violence like that is never the answer...it's just stupid, raw emotion.
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On a brighter note...Liverpool FC rocks!
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What Russell hasn't mentioned in his blog post is the following: The teenager (aged 16 or 17) was on a CYFS access visit. He punched his mother in the face and broke her nose prior to all this happening, resulting in his mother getting ACC. He was was charged with assault but Police decided not to pursue it and let him off with a formal warning, reasons of which are suppressed. Charges were laid against the mother but police withdrew the charges when they found out what her son had done, but the crown relaid them after what was most probably political and CYF pressures after the boy got his warning.
Russell has criticised the actions of both parents, but not the teenager. Why?
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What Russell hasn't mentioned in his blog post
dave, Russell linked to the story in his first paragraph, which outlined what the teenager had done also.
Please don't tell me you think the teenager deserved this violent treatment from his parent and guardian. That would be an obscene implication.
I would suggest that having such violent parents is exactly how the teenager learned to use violence himself. It came from somewhere: his loving role models.
Don'tyathink?
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but you hit me first, no i didnt, you hit me first, I did not, yes you did, if you say that again and I'll smash you, ...... and so on and so on.
what was most probably political and CYF pressures after the boy got his warning
and the evidence supporting this statement is ....
Note: This is not the answer to the question posed regarding Russell's post
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Russell has criticised the actions of both parents, but not the teenager. Why?
Because one party is a child and the other two are adults who are expected by society to be able to resolve disputes without resorting to assault on a minor. Because I am not inclined to accept baseless conspiracy theories about CYFS and more inclined to trust the judgement of the police, who I have no reason to believe acted corruptly.
According to the evidence given in court, "his mother slapped and punched him in the face at least three times," before the son reciprocated. Is this your idea of sound parenting?
Furthermore, the account includes things the mother left out of the self-serving version of the story you uncritically relayed on her behalf, including events backed up by an independent witness:
Mr Hobbs saw the man kick the boy two or three times and then grab him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him toward the vehicle, and put both his knees into the boy's ribcage.
"He was putting everything into it," he said. The woman did nothing to stop the assault.
I am honestly appalled that you cannot acknowledge that these people appear to be disastrous parents, and instead prefer to continue blaming their children, who are the victims. Think hard about this, Dave. You are wrong.
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I certainly don't think the teenager deserved his treatment from his father and I implied that in my blog post. However I also don't think that the parents deserved the treatment either and if it is good enough for one to be charge, its good enough for both.
Tony, I got my new info from the woman concerned today. theres nothing like getting information from the source, is there.
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Russell, just seen your comment. This kid is not a child - he's is a minor and is criminally responsible for his actions as are his parents. So as a 16/17year old is legally responsible for his actions, its less OK for him to hit the living daylights out of his parents? Bullshit.I'm not saying that these parents are good parents, have never said that. Ever. Hey , the parents may be disastrous parents for all I know, especially the step father ( there, Ive said it... happy?) I blame CYFS, actually.They were bringing up this kid. Finally according to the media, the witness didnt witness any assaults but the step fathers.
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Hey , the parents may be disastrous parents for all I know, especially the step father ( there, Ive said it... happy?) I blame CYFS, actually.They were bringing up this kid.
You blame CYFS? Look, forget it. I'm just plain appalled now.
Please refer to your own relay of the mother's account of the earlier case involving the 14 year-old: "Apparently he did not respond well to the man's encouragement to help." Oh really. You need to stop believing this woman.
I have a 16 year-old boy. If I assaulted him, or stood by while my partner committed a sustained bodily assault on him, I hope I'd have the moral sense to know I was wrong.
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@dave
Well, for one thing, the teen doesn't have a legal defence of reasonable force that the parents seem to be maintaining they have. Which ought to be a the perfect example of why s59 should be repealed. It's a very strong argument against the many people who claimed that Bradford's Bill would never effect serious child abusers - clearly it would, because they would KNOW that the violent attacks that they are inflicting are not allowed by law.
As for blaming CYFS. WTF? That's just crazy talk. What would you suggest they should have done differently?
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Russell, I don't condone the mum standing there while her partner was beating up his stepson. I really don't. Im not htat mad. I have kidstoo and if my partner did what that guy did, I`d step in also. But CYFS have had thier hands in this family for too long now, and in some cases much of it is unneccesary. That must have had an effect, and thats what I was getting at. I don't blame CYFSs for the assault, and Ive just found out 5 mins ago that the kid was in the care of his father and have amended my post. I do liketo be accurate. NOw, off to cook tea
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merc,
Well done Dave, you've put in a good day.
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It's a very strong argument against the many people who claimed that Bradford's Bill would never effect serious child abusers - clearly it would, because they would KNOW that the violent attacks that they are inflicting are not allowed by law.
Excuse me? Personally, I'm a damn sight more outraged that a another wife-beating shit bag got discharged without conviction by another Court Jester who says 'a criminal conviction would far outweigh the crime". You'd think some folks would get it through their thick head that settling domestics with their fists are not allowed BY LAW, but that would require the assumption that we're talking about rational human beings.
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So I hear the video has been pulled already from youtube?
And Craig is right - settling 'domestics' (hate that innocuous name) by fists is illegal. They should have convicted him.
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@ craig
Well, if the 'wife beating shit bag' was telling himself that what he was doing was okay because there was a law saying he was allowed to use reasonable force on his wife, then I could see the parallel.
But to extend your logic, you're saying if we introduced such a law, it would make no difference to the behaviour of wife beaters (because they're not rational human beings, so said law would make no difference to their behaviour). Of course I can't prove it, but common sense seems to dictate that wife beating would increase, and likely the severity of wife beating would increase to boot.
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Belt,
Seeing as everyone else is touting it, I invite you, rather belatedly, to vote for Public Address in the 2007 People's Choice NetGuide Web Awards.
Ok, you have my vote.
Kiwiblog is equally eligable, were it not for the lowest common denominator participants which continue to drag things down without moderation under the excuse of lack of time and freedom of speech. Yuck.
Good luck.
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Peter:
There are defences to assualt - self-defence comes immediately to mind - and much as I despise Judge Philip Connell for doing so, as current law stands it was a proper exercise of his powers to discharge Sitiveni Sivivatu without conviction.
I just think that of all the arguments for repealing S. 59 of the Crimes Act, that will magically 'send a message' is one that is, at best, rather naive about how the thug mindset actually works. I would absolutely fabulous if it was that simple.
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Russell, you`re being a bit silly.You have noted the article you linked to said said the woman did nothing to stop the assault. I wonder why, when she had just had her nose broken. You wrote
If I ....stood by while my partner committed a sustained bodily assault on him, I hope I'd have the moral sense to know I was wrong.
Actually, if you were a woman and had just had your nose broken by a male much bigger than yourself, let alone the spitting blood etc I'm sure you would have "stood by" when that same person was attacked by another - I doubt you would have intervened either.
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OH and Peter, how on earth can the Parents maintain a S59 defence - the guys not a child. Great defence for repealing S59 you have there.
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Well, maybe it's naive.
At the moment though I have reason to believe that some serious abusers feel that what they are doing is 'reasonable force' (because of their particular circumstance). Clearly they're wrong.
Maybe it's incredibly naive to think that 'sending a message' would really make any difference to their mentality. But if I may draw a parallel with other types of message sending - plays, books, films, essays, and the like I'll quote Kurt Vonnegut on the subject:
(from the PEN conference, 1973):
...the Vietnam War has proved this... Virtually every American Writer was against our participation in that civil war. We raised all hell about the war for years and years - with novels and poems and plays and short stories. We dropped on our complacent society the literary equivalent of a hydrogen bomb.
I will now report to you the power of such a bomb. It has the explosive force of a very large banana creme pie - a pie two metres in diameter, twenty centimetres thick, and dropped from a height of ten metres or more...
What can tyrants, large and small, learn from my speech so far? That [messages] are harmless. They may safely be allowed all the freedoms which birds have - to sing as they please, to hop about, to fly...
Thus ends the public part of my speech...
I have a few additional words for you, my colleagues. Please don't repeat them outside this room. While it is true that we American fiction writers failed to modify the course of the war, we have reason to suspect that we have poisoned the minds of thousands, or perhaps even millions of American young people. Our hope is that the poison will make them worse than useless in unjust wars.
We shall see.
Cheers Kurt!
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@dave
OH and Peter, how on earth can the Parents maintain a S59 defence - the guys not a child. Great defence for repealing S59 you have there.
Yeah, I'm sure their mentality would have been completely different when the kid was 15. Give me a break. Besides which it was, (as plainly pointed out in Russell's original post) the lady herself that got involved in the whole section59 debate.
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.. which means I do appreciate why the mother stood by..having now taken into account cirumstances, ( a good thingto do sometimes) perhaps it is reasonable after all in a situation when you dont want to be beaten up again. Russell, what are your thoughts on this given your earlier comment.
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Well, that's got nothing to do with the comments I just made.
But whatever - the circumstances of the case are horrifying. The eye witness accounts are horrifying. Watching the video, the woman is saying that she's had no choice to do the things she's done - that all her parenting, and the parenting of her partner has been reasonable response to the child's behaviour - that it was a last resort, they hated doing it blah, blah. Hell, maybe she even convinced herself of it. From what we've seen since, that looks a lot like bollocks.
But whatever - if you want to convince yourself that this woman is a good judge of reasonable force, the family environment she created was a good one, and CYFS or whatever is to blame then good luck to you.
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I too have a 16yr old son, never smacked the kids and have never this sort of problems with mine - I do believe that bringing the kids up to think that violence is an answer to disputes is a caustic thing
I can understand the frustration (on both sides, I remember being a teenager) but honestly violence doesn't ever make things better ....
Dave - you're missing the most obvious thing here - these parents are adults - at any time they could have and should have just walked away - instead someone's machismo's probably been threatened and they just started wailing away - this is the same world view that results in pub brawls -
Dave, your capacity for mendaciousness is limitless. This psycopath has beaten her children for years, sometimes with weapons, badly enough to be hauled up on charges for it. He hit her because she started in on yet another one of her frenzied attacks ("At one stage his mother suggested he had no respect for the man. When he agreed he did not, he said his mother slapped and punched him in the face at least three times."), he fought back.
Bravo to her son. If more vicious bullies got a taste of their own medicine, they might be a little more restrained.
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